Aeolia

25: Songs in the Snow

The woman felt walls of white steadily building up around her, amassing into a protective bunker. She waited, waited. Her breathing was rapid and frosty. The songbird huddled against her stomach, his tiny ribcage rising and falling—making her picture waves against salt-lined rocks. Would she ever see the ocean?

     Would she ever stop thinking?

     Ravine sighed and wished she could sleep away the cold, like Spire was.

     She picked him up and cradled his body in her arms. She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling of compacted snow that hovered a mere touch above her.

     Yes, the snow had piled and piled around her collapsed figure, creating a small den. But somehow there was still room for Ravine to move, to stretch out nearly at full length. Honeybee had said the seasons had minds of their own. How true that proved now.

     Her head leapt from topic to topic. She could tell that it was now night, by the affected way the light tinged through the walls. Since the air was tranquil and her den intact, she guessed the snow still blanketed this region of the savanna. Winter was victorious, at least for a night. Could seasons feel emotions? How could seasons fight, if they didn't have hosts to leash their energy to?

     Ravine was not yet in Aeolia. So what would she find there?

     After minutes of ceaseless thinking, the woman let claustrophobia sweep over her. The walls of the den were suffocating. Only a pinprick perforated the ceiling to let new air channel in. Other than that, she was...trapped.

     Overcome by fear, Ravine screamed and thrashed.

     She was so far from home. Why hadn't she stayed in the village to see if her mother could be salvaged? She could have saved so many people, or at least killed the soldiers to make up for all the good lives taken. She should have stayed and shot them—shot the man who starved her father, shot the man who put a bullet in her mother's forehead.

     Guilt manifested inside of her, creeping through her skin.

     Now her own body, her own mind, made her itch. She longed to escape from these human confines. Why couldn't she be like a season, with only one duty—to wreathe its weathers throughout the land, with the comfort of a schedule and specific practice?

     And yet Spire still slept.

     Ravine wondered, in a moment of peace amidst her panic, what he was dreaming about.

     Little did she know the songbird was fluttering away from a dark scaled thing, beating his wings but getting nowhere. A tongue licked his tail feathers. His nightmare enthralled him.

     Ravine attempted to loosen her posture, to take breaths through her nose, to let them out from her lips. She tried to sleep, but sleep wouldn't come.

     So she let herself cry, after days of denying impatient tears.

     Then came the music. It was soft, ethereal.

     Aeolian.

     The woman sniffed and straightened, straining to hear.

     Yes! There it was! A beautiful melody that reminded her of a mother's warmth. Her mother's warmth.

     The music made her think of turquoise icicles suspended from trees made of ice. A wind—a teasing wind—wound through these trees, the icicles knocking together in a rhythm of chimes. The sound was oddly hollow, wooden.

     Intrigued, Ravine felt a desire to come to the source of the music. She rested Spire on her lap as she kicked and scraped the north-facing wall. Once there was enough space for her to emerge, she stepped out, holding the bird.

     Before her laid a world of soft blues and whites. All sound was muffled by the pillowed snow, save that same gentle melody. The sky was the grainy black of an old photograph.

     It was the most spectacular thing Ravine had ever seen.

     She smiled and took her first true breath since they had entered Seasons' Spiral, and began to walk north, following her ears. She reveled in the symbolism of her feet making prints in the clean snow.

     Soon she saw something in the distance. It was bright and alive and dancing. The woman squinted.

     Fire?

     Was the fire singing?

     She broke into a run.